


As Our Worlds Move On

by afewreelthoughts



Category: Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Goodbyes, M/M, Post-Canon, Separations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 22:23:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3827143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/pseuds/afewreelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antonio Traversa did not like Belmont.  </p><p>True, the Lady Portia’s estate was beautiful, magnificent even, but its wide green and golden fields dizzied him.  To the south, miles of land stretched to the horizon.  To the north, the sea, and Venice in the far distance, its silhouette small enough to hold in his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Our Worlds Move On

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bold_seer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/gifts).



> A gift for bold-seer on tumblr, for the Bard's Birthday Gift Exchange. 
> 
> I was given the prompt: “The Merchant of Venice. In this shirt, I can be you. (In this shirt – The Irrepressibles)”
> 
> As I listened to the song, I was struck by the line “as our worlds move on” and recalled some readings I’d done recently about the play and the different rules that governed Venice and Belmont. I began to wonder whether someone who belongs on Belmont and someone who belongs in Venice could be happy together, and took that as my starting point.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this!

Antonio Traversa did not like Belmont.  

True, the Lady Portia’s estate was beautiful, magnificent even, but its wide greenand golden fields dizzied him.  To the south, miles of land stretched to the horizon.  To the north, the sea, and Venice in the far distance.  Antonio could feel like a king on his city’s winding streets.  He could navigate the canals blind and never questioned his trust in a floating city.  Though the view from Belmont was the same sea he saw every morning from his palazzo, it seemed smaller when wreathed with acres of tamed land.  On so much solid ground, he and all he loved felt insignificant.

From the pink glow on the horizon, he saw the sun would soon set.

Inside Portia’s palace was a celebration in his honor.  The Lady of Belmont had promised to open her finest vintage to celebrate their victory over Shylock the Jew.  Since the trial Antonio felt like he had no control over himself, that he was simply drifting in Bassanio’s wake, too dazed to follow his own steps.  And he knew he could not eat.   After he and Bassanio returned to Belmont, and Bassanio's reunion with his wifeled them to reaffirm their wedding vows, Antonio had found a polite excuse to leave and lost himself in Belmont's labyrinthine gardens.

When he had wandered until he exhausted himself, he sat on the carved marble surrounding a massive fountain.  He looked away from the statue of a lithe young woman pouring water from a vase, and instead out over winding rose bushes and rolling fields, across the sea to the spires of St. Mark’s, small as pins in the distance.  The distant silhouette of Venice was small enough to hold in his hands.

The sound of gentle footfalls startled him.

Bassanio’s soft leather boots made hardly a sound.  He was dressed in purple and red and brown, fabrics thick and rich that clung to his body.  His boots crept high up his calves, tooled all over with gold.  Hose covered his knees, the skin beneath smoother than silk.  The buds on the garden trees all seemed to stretch towards him, desperate to touch the air he breathed.

“Now I have found thee, wilt thou come in to dine?” said the Lord of Belmont.

“I am not hungry,” Antonio said.  His stomach grumbled.

Bassanio laughed.

“Tell thy wife her gardens are too lovely at sunset for me to leave them, and that I will take my supper out here."

“Careful, good Antonio, she may think to join thee.”

Antonio knew if he looked too long at Bassanio’s loveliness, dressed in finery even he could not afford to give him, that he could not bear it.  So he stared instead at far-off Venice.

“It will be rude not to accept her invitation.”

“I do not wish to be rude,” Antonio said.  “I will come inside in a moment."

“Thou couldst break a rule for once, Antonio.”  Bassanio sat next to him on the marble edge of the fountain.  “Be a little rude, if thou wishest."

“With thy permission…”

“It’s not rude if it’s with my permission,” Bassanio said, wrinkling his nose in annoyance.  He leaned close to Antonio.  “Be a little rude, dear Antonio.”

“Thy wife would not like it,” he meant to say, but Bassanio’s kiss interrupted him, a gentle touch on his lips.

“Stay,” Bassanio said.  “My wife thinks me silly and perhaps I am, but I can keep a secret, and thou canst be it.  Thou knowest that.”  He spoke earnestly, but Antonio could tell that even he did not believe his words.

Antonio took Bassanio’s hand in his and lifted it to his lips.  His fingers brushed Portia’s heavy gold ring. “This is beautiful,” he said. “And thine to keep.  I will return home tonight.  I must.”

“Thou hast done so much for me, ’tis wrong thou shouldst return to Venice alone!”

“’Tis not wrong, ’tis life, Bassanio,” Antonio said.

Bassanio looked so like a young boy in these moments, his lineless brow wrinkled in confusion, lips open, searching for words.  “’Tis not what life ought to be.  Thou ought not to be alone.”  

Bassanio believed these words, Antonio could tell.  He believed them too much.  He looked away, down at their faces side by side in the nearly still water.  The stone woman with the vase poured a slow and steady stream of water and did not mar their reflections.

“I’ll come to Venice, and often,” Bassanio’s reflection promised.  “I can’t spend the rest of my days here on this island.”  It brushed a lock of hair from his face.  “Perhaps nothing need change between us,” it lied.  “I don’t belong here.” 

But he did without knowing it.  He did.  A thousand artists should paint Bassanio here, with his hundred children following him through golden fields.  The city might beckon him, but he could put down roots here in the soft soil as he could not in damp stone.

“Wouldst thou  be so selfish as to die and leave the world no copy of thy beauty?” Antonio asked Bassanio’s beautiful reflection.

“Why can’t I have it all?  A wife here and my life with thee?  So many men do,” Bassanio said, looking down at the Lady Portia’s ring.  But there was no urgency to his words, and he knew his answer.

“Thou art a man now, Bassanio.  It would be a great shame for thee to remain in my bed.

“I do not think highly of shame.  It has never done men any good,” Bassanio said and faced Antonio with his chin held high.  Antonio found he had nothing kind to say in return.

“Give my best regards to your lady wife,” he said instead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Antonio Traversa traveled to Venice as the sun sunk below the horizon.  He loved his city most of all like this, suspended in light of the moon and lanterns.  It looked so much like a miracle raised from the sea’s watery depths.  Some of the clergy here spoke of Venice as built by the hand of God instead of man, and what God had raised from the deep, he could just as easily destroy.

Antonio and his gondolier traveled in silence.  He would not on any other night have noticed it, for gondoliers were not men with whom to exchange idle conversation, but tonight thee silence was like a heavy weight on his chest.

As they pulled into the harbor, he knew he should not go home.  Three of his ships were here to receive him from India, from Lisbon and the Barbary Coast.  It was not too late to greet them and joy in their good fortune, but he did not wish to.  

He directly the gondolier to his home, paid him more than was his due, and unlocked his front door.

Antonio's house was pitch-black.  Immediately he heard the scurrying of steps and the opening of another door.  His apprentice Raffaello raced to the door, set a lit candelabra on a small table, and took his coat.  “I beg your pardon, signor,” he said, yawning. “Will you require anything else tonight?”

Antonio had clearly woken the boy from a deep sleep.  He felt an apology on the tip of his tongue, but quickly swallowed it.  “Nothing, sirrah.  Go back to sleep.”   He took up the candelabra, and ascended the two flights to his bedchamber.

In the weeks before his bond with the Jew expired, Antonio’s well-ordered life had fallen to pieces.   Upon opening his door, he was reminded of the extent of his desperation.  The mess he saw overwhelmed him, papers and clothes scattered everywhere, such that there was no clear path from the door to his spacious bed.

On another night, he would have simply gone to sleep and asked Raffaello to clean his room in the morning, but on this night he could not bear it.

He lit three candles, and set to work.

Papers.  So many papers.  He remembered how he had searched desperately for funds to save his life and in the process unearthed every bill he had ever paid, every promissory note he had received, then turned his wardrobe inside out in a quest for valuables that could be sold for 3,000 ducats.  

The papers he sorted into piles on the furniture, his clothes he tossed aside in a pile of their own.  As he worked, the last glow of evening disappeared from the sky, and the stars came out.  His candles sputtered in their brass sticks.  

At the bottom of a pile of sheets at the foot of his bed, Antonio found a white linen shirt he knew did not belong to him.  Bassanio left it behind months ago, as he dressed in haste, taking Antonio’s instead.  When Antonio later offered to return the shirt, Bassanio had smiled a wanton smile.

“Keep it.”

As the deadline approached for him to pay the Jew, Antonio had pulled the shirt out from the bottom of his wardrobe, clinging to it as if it would save him from Shylock’s wrath, summon Bassanio home from Belmont to save his life.  Perhaps Bassanio had saved him, Antonio considered as he knelt on the floor, the shirt still clasped in his hands.  In an odd way, he had. 

He stood, stiff and sore from kneeling so long on the hard floor, and walked to his large windows, looking out over the Canal Grande.  He held Bassanio’s shirt close to his heart, and gazed at the horizon.  He thought he saw Belmont in the distance, or perhaps merely a bright star clinging to the horizon.


End file.
